Archive for November 2007

Basically…
Eat badly, get to bed late, work like a bitch, slip in a good meal with Feebs, get home, load the car and make a very long, bleary-eyed drive to Apollo Bay.

We checked into the motel at 11. They’d closed for the night but left our key in the door. Fill in the breakfast slip kidding myself that ‘sausages, bacon and eggs’ will be as nice as it would be in a Melbourne cafe, but happy to load up in any way possible and thankful that it’ll come to the door ready to eat.

Interestingly (for a rest day), I had two firsts today: 25 straight push-ups, and 10 straight pull-ups (kipping). Got a few free-standing seconds in a handstand in the gym at work too (just fooling around). :)

Bike / road / commute

Easy ride there, easy ride back. I wound it up for one of the straight-aways on the way home, but nothing crazy.

Thus the hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Phaecian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing arete.

Arete implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency – or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, and efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.

Phaedrus remembered a line from Thoreau: “You never gain something but that you lose something.” And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained the power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth – but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: and understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.

We went over to Mick and Jo’s place for dinner and to pick up their super plush, super thick truckasaurus double inflatable bed for the race in Forest on the weekend. Can’t have my mamma-to-be trying to catch zeds on a 5 mm Thermarest now.

Time:

“Developed by Pat O’Shea in 1969 and refined during the two following decades. Typically an IWT session involves a set of 8-12 reps of an “athletic lift” immediately chased with two minutes of free exercise @ 90-95% of capacity, followed by two minutes of rest. This is repeated for a total of three sets after which the athlete is rewarded with a 5-minute break. The first phase is repeated though the lift and the free exercise are changed. Recovery periods are the same. Phase three involves a circuit of complementary movements, often using bodyweight, with 4-12 reps and 3-10 rounds.”

WMG

Exercise

Sets/Reps/Dist

Weight/Time

Hang Clean

12 reps

45 kg

Step-up

24″

2 min

Rest

2 min

4 rounds

Rest 5 min

Front Squat

10 reps

45 kg

Skip

2 min

Rest

2 min

4 rounds

Rest 5 min

Pull-ups

8 reps

0 kg

Push-ups

8 reps

0 kg

Knees-to-Elbows

8 reps

0 kg

Double Crunch

8 reps

0 kg

Run

1 min

3 rounds

Rest 5 min

Press

1 rep

40 kg

Press

10 reps

20 kg

Time:

1:07:00

So…
Interesting stuff. The first round of hang cleans I miscalculated and loaded the bar with 50 kg instead of 45 which made it very hard to regrip and maintain form. Fixed that one up pretty quick.

In all other regards it’s entirely manageable; which is probably why it comes as such a surprise when you come out the far side of it, sit down and realise just how tired you are. The rest makes for a kind of enforced pacing.

Fee and I drove out to Safety Beach to pick up a cot for future little Caddy, then caught the ferry over to Queenscliff and the end of the annual Queenscliff Music Festival. I slept heavily in the car, which is something that pretty much never happens. Super nice day all things considered.

Basically…
Could’ve gotten some early miles in on the road bike, if I didn’t leave my shoes at work. Could’ve substituted the mountain bike, if it didn’t have a big gash in the rear tyre. Coulda, woulda shoulda…